Keynote: Challenges to Information Discovery in a World of AbundanceDan Gillmor, author, We the Media and Mediactive; Director, Knight School of Digital Media Entrepreneurship, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Arizona State University, and Faculty Associate and former Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University

Presentation Title: The Curator is King

The Web, search engines and social media have created a world of information overload. The floodgates have been opened with workers in academia, business and research facing a daily torrent of information - articles, research reports, blogs, discussion forums, RSS feeds, and more. How does one effectively navigate this abundance across diverse media and resources to identify the relevant, credible information that is worthy of time and attention? And what entrepreneurial opportunities does this new world of information discovery offer to content providers, librarians and educators? Come and learn how the information explosion is changing the world of information discovery and how your organization can leverage that change.

We all live with an overabundance of information. This is nothing new, since people have always been bombarded with more information than they could process. We have adapted by learning what is valuable and ignoring what is not. In the online world, however, our ability to discriminate between the important and the unimportant can no longer rely on the senses we use in the physical world. In this talk, Sue Feldman will discuss IDC's research on the growth of information and then demonstrate how some new technologies can help cut down on information overload. She will note challenges that both publishers and users face in surviving the Information Tsunami.

Information Abundance: Is It Changing How We Think?Moderator: Christopher Keneally, Director, Business Development, Copyright Clearance CenterSteven Berlin Johnson, Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine, and distinguished author, Everything Bad is Good for You and Where Good Ideas Come From

The use of digital technologies has changed the workplace - whether it is an office, library, laboratory or classroom. But is it also changing how we think? In one camp there is the belief that extensive use of the Internet can result in a loss of the mental discipline required for reflection and problem-solving. In another, there is the belief that the use of the Internet can actually make us smarter because digital media link over a billion people in a network, creating a cognitive surplus. This session will look at how digital technology is fundamentally changing user search behavior - a change must be incorporated into the information search and retrieval tools of the very near future!

John Mark Ockerbloom, Digital Library Architect and Planner, University of Pennsylvania; Finding Our Way in the Crowd: Locating and Cultivating Communities of Knowledge [Slides]

Brit Mueller, Director, Library Services, Qualcomm, Inc. The Necessity of Extensive Information for Discovery and Decision Making (or More Information is a Good Thing)

Scholars and researchers are bombarded daily by e-mails, RSS feeds, and postings from blogs, social networks, and other sources. Web searching can deliver thousands of relevant results. Come and learn how librarians and users are coping with the exponential growth of digital information digital information - what search tools they use, how easy and effective they perceive those tools to be in navigating information abundance, their experiences with misinformation, and how their jobs may have changed as a result of information overload.

5:15pm - 6:00pm:

NFAIS Assembly Meeting (Grand Ballroom, Hotel First Floor)The NFAIS Assembly Meeting is open to all representatives of NFAIS member organizations.

Information does not solely reside within peer-reviewed journals. It is accessible from multiple resources scattered around the globe that do not conform to a uniform standard of quality - from publishers and other content providers, from online communities of interest- and even from even bloggers. No longer limited to text, information can be found in videos, sound tracks, pictures, data sets, charts, and graphs. This session will focus on how innovative content providers and librarians are identifying, evaluating and incorporating reliable, quality content across all media to ensure comprehensiveness of products and services even in a time of exponential information growth.

10:00am - 10:30am:

Break and Networking OpportunitySponsored in part by Thomson Reuters Healthcare & Science

10:30am - 12:00pm:

Leveraging Technology to Manage Information Abundance(session sponsored in part by the American Psychological Association/PsycINFO)

Digital technologies have fueled the information explosion, but they also hold the key to effectively managing it. New filtering tools, semantic tagging, and innovative workflow system are just a few of the technology approaches being implemented today. Come and learn how innovative content providers and librarians are using current technologies to enrich information discovery in a world of information abundance.

The Internet is entering a new phase that represents a fundamental shift in how computing is done. With cloud computing, users rely primarily upon data and software residing on the Internet, rather than on a personal computer or a local server. To quote Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, "The network will truly be the computer." This new approach to computing offers almost limitless flexibility, better reliability and security, enhanced collaboration, portability, and the ability to use simpler, less expensive devices-and will have huge impacts on all segments of the Information Economy.

Some leading technologists have forecast that within five years 80 percent or more of the world's computing and data storage will occur "in the cloud." This will unleash an "exaflood" of digital data--20-50 times more online data than we have today--but also provide us with powerful new tools to organize and make sense of it all. How can we realize the full potential of the Cloud and develop the tools and techniques needed to thrive in the world of "Big Data?"

Innovative technologies are a key element of the information discovery process and of the efficient management of information abundance. Not only must technology be effective, but it must also enhance the overall experience provided to the information seeker. This session will take a look at a few of the technologies that are gathering momentum - cloud computing, image search, semantic search, touch technologies, predictive tools, recommendation engines and more. Come and learn more about the emerging technologies that will shape the future of information discovery.

Moderator: Judith Russell, NFAIS President 2010-2011, Dean of University Libraries, University of Florida

Award Recipient: Dr. Ben Shneiderman, Professor, Founding Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, and member of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland, College Park (Slides)

The first generation of search tools have provided remarkable capabilities to many researchers for finding specific information, navigating to desired web sites, or tracking down needed documents. A second generation of tools is increasingly helping researchers in supporting exploratory search in situations where the goals are less clear, where complete coverage is necessary, and where proof of absence is required (patents, legal precedents, etc.). However, the third generation of tools turns search into social discovery, in which colleagues, informal groups, for-profit companies, professional organizations, and international federations are motivated to find, filter, organize, annotate, and summarize voluminous information resources. The Reader-to-Leader framework proposes the usability and sociability design needed to integrate the efforts of readers, contributors, collaborators, and leaders, but much work remains to be done to validate this framework and refine it in multiple contexts.

Dr. Shneiderman pioneered the highlighted textual link in 1983, and it became part of Hyperties, a precursor to the web. His move into information visualization spawned Spotfire, known for pharmaceutical drug discovery and genomic data analysis. He is a technical advisor for the treemap software producer, The Hive Group.

Dr. Shneiderman is the author of Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems (1980) and Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (5th ed. 2010). With S. Card and J. Mackinley, he co-authored Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (1999). His book, Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies (MIT Press), won the IEEE Award for Distinguished Literary Contribution in 2004. His most recent book, Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL (2011), was co-authored with D. Hansen and M.A. Smith.

Tuesday, February 29, 2011

The Future of Information Discovery: Preserving the U.S. National RecordModerator: Don Hagen, Associate Director, National Technical Information Service, Department of Commerce

An Open NARA: Preserving and Making Accessible the Records of a Nation

David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, National Archives and Records Administration

Yesterday's communications revolution is a reality in the Federal Government today. Agencies across the government use Twitter and Facebook to communicate with the public; debate and formulate policy through email, instant messaging, and wikis; and document how they carry out their activities through digital audio and video from around the world, and beyond. At the National Archives (NARA) we are actively experimenting with tools and exploring how they are being used in other Federal agencies to inform our records management guidance and perform our fundamental archival responsibilities. We monitor how these information technologies support the business needs of Federal agencies; assure the rights and interests of the Federal Government and its citizens; and preserve, protect, and make available the records and information needed to document the National Experience for future generations. We are pleased that the White House has acknowledged NARA's role in the recently released report, Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology (December 2010).

As called for in this report to the President and Congress, digital democracy can transform our society over the next decade or two. Government will be more responsive to and accountable because citizens can see and measure how it responds to requests and problems and can more fully participate in planning processes. All citizens will be able to make effective use of government data, thanks to breakthrough tools supporting access, analysis, and visualization for non-experts. Archivists, historians, journalists and the public will have better and more convenient access to government records, including information previously available only in paper form. Advancing this digital democracy vision, partnerships among the federal government, commercial sector, university libraries, and public archives are important to build and maintain the capacity to store critical data. The Open Government Initiative is opening data and documents at NARA and elsewhere, transforming the way the government does business and the way people interact with the government.

Adam Farquhar, Head of Digital Library Technology, the British Library; Voyage to the New World: Sealing the Gaps and Making It Last(Slides)

Mark Gauthier, Vice President, Indexing and Editorial Services, the H. W. Wilson Company; A Global Perspective on the Literature of Art History: A Case Study from the Expansion of Art Full Text(Slides)

The information community is truly global. New sources of content are emerging as developing countries rise in power and become creators as well as consumers of core information. Scientists and scholars around the world collaborate on projects, creating, sharing and reusing information. This session will look at such global issues as the technology infrastructure required to support global access to information, the impact of the growth of non-English language content on the overall publishing process, and R&D efforts to develop technologies that can accurately and efficiently facilitate the access and retrieval of information across diverse languages."

Richard H. Weaver, Senior Vice President, Infotrieve; In Case of an Earthquake, Head to Higher Ground(Slides)

Today's business models and practices must evolve to meet the requirements of today's information discovery processes. For example, if information is delivered in smaller chunks (graphs, charts, pieces of articles), a new payment structure must be developed to support this change in information consumption. Information seekers expect to be able to re-use the information that they retrieve. Are these expectations being met and how? Come and learn how information providers are ensuring that their organizations are revising their business models and practices in the new world information discovery.

12:45pm - 2:45pm:

Awards Luncheon and Final Keynote Grand Ballroom, Hotel First Floor

Moderator: Judith Russell, NFAIS President 2010-2011, Dean of University Libraries, University of Florida

Title: The Second Web: Content for a Web that Works Like the WorldJohn Blossom, President, Shore Communcations Inc. (Slides)

Do we tame the "information tsunami" or do we swim in it? The Internet, mobile networks and other machine-to-machine communications connect us to more devices equipped with more sensors and more interfaces designed to work with a wider range of human senses than ever before. This presentation explores the explosive growth of the Second Web, a Web that works like the world which is becoming a world that lives in the Web. It is a Web defined by real-time interactions, translations and transactions, with value created through a more sophisticated appeal to human senses and the semantic analysis of human intents in more complex contexts.

The Second Web challenges us to recalibrate our assumptions about the power of new platforms to retire many of the lessons of the first Web. There is room for proprietary and premium solutions in the Second Web, but they will have to respond to a Web that is expanding exponentially across a growing galaxy of new platforms using Web-centric standards. Solutions must also respond to a wide variety of new sensors and interfaces that are changing fundamentally how people request, interact with and experience information services.